Nine-year-old Kanon Ott, of Brandon, was optimistic that he would kill his first deer this year. His father, Danny, wanted to make sure his first deer was a buck and a memorable experience. Though that might seem easy to some people it was not the case at their camp, as three consecutive years of flooding had about wiped out the deer population. They couldn’t hunt at all one year and had been on a one-buck per family limit the last couple of years.
Ott’s daughter, Kaylee, had the first chance last year. She killed her biggest deer ever, a 140-inch-plus buck, at the Belle Island Hunting Club north of Vicksburg. Now it was Kanon’s time, so they didn’t want it to be a doe or young buck.
“Our numbers are still way down since the flood,” Danny Ott said. “We only get one buck a year and no does now, but the quality of the bucks has really gone up lately. Kanon set his sights on an 8-point that we had gotten on film, and we started hunting for him.”
Sometimes things just don’t work out and sometimes it is for the best. Kaylee and her friends, Colt and Tate Dowd, went to a shoot house one afternoon and actually filmed a gigantic 10-point buck at the same place she killed her trophy last year.
“I didn’t think we’d actually see a buck like that walk out into a food plot in broad daylight again, but we decided to give him a try the next day,” Ott said. “I took my son back in there and the buck came in at 100 yards between 4:30 and 5:00.”
Giant buck
Kanon waited until the deer turned broadside, kept his composure and made a great shot. The Big Buck Bounty contest out of Jackson scored the buck at 180 1/8 and the Ott’s will get an official Boone and Crockett score after the mandatory drying time has been completed. The buck was a main frame 10-point that had a 19-inch spread and weighed 250 pounds.
“Kanon shot the buck with a Winchester 25 Ultra Mag made for youths,” Ott said. “The bullets are actually short and really fat, and it did some serious damage to the buck. It only ran about 120 yards from the site of the shot. The buck ran into a thicket, so we got a man to bring his Catahoula Cur dog and he found the buck in no time.”
Needless to say, Kanon and the whole family were really excited to find such a monster buck.
“Kanon was ecstatic, and he got a picture with all the kids,” Ott said. “It was really quite an experience for everybody.”
If you don’t think you are capable of harvesting a trophy buck, then think again. With a lot of practice and help from a mentor you might just harvest the buck of a lifetime too.
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